UM Sydney’s Charlotte Berry + Grace Espinoza win Silver in Cannes Young Lions media comp

Australia’s Charlotte Berry and Grace Espinoza, strategy executives at creative connections agency UM in Sydney, were awarded Young Lions Media Silver last night at the 64th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Berry (left) and Espinoza (right) are in Cannes representing Australia, having won the 2017 Australian Young Lions competition, run by News Corp Australia, the official Australian representative of the 2017 International Cannes Lions Festival.

Says Berry and Espinoza: “We loved our concept and are thrilled to be bringing home silver from Cannes. We want to thank News Corp Australia for giving us this incredible opportunity.”

Says Tony Phillips, chief marketing officer, News Corp Australia: “We’re thrilled with the success of our Cannes Young Lions media guns Charlotte and Grace who beat tough competition from more than 30 countries. You have done Australia proud.”

The Young Lions media challenge was to help Amnesty International refresh their Write for Rights campaign, reaching a new millennial audience. Teams had just 24 hours to deliver on the brief.

Says Berry and Espinoza: “We went in with a clear strategy to crack the idea and said to ourselves that 2017 was going to be our year.

“Our hotel room swiftly became a war zone, covered in fluorescent post it notes which you could see outside the hotel. It was an emotional rollercoaster, but  as soon as we believed we cracked the idea we wrote a list of “Why We Love It”, some wise advice given to us by our original mentor and national strategy director at UM, Sam Geer.

“We had this same feeling of pure joy and excitement in the Australian finals, so when it overcame us again we knew we were onto something big!”

Write for Rights asks people to submit letters, emails, Tweets, Facebook posts and photos  to show support for people who are suffering human rights abuses, such as being unfairly imprisoned for speaking out against injustice. To date, the campaign has actioned more than 4.66 million letters, emails, petitions and more.

Espinoza and Berry’s idea involved compelling university graduates to commit to Write for Rights at graduation.

Says Espinoza and Berry: “Letter writing is no longer a pre-existing behaviour, particularly for millennials, so we needed to identify a group of millennials who had the time and compassion to write letters.

“We realised these individuals are all in one place – universities – the place you start to define and declare your beliefs. The pinnacle of your university experience is graduation, the moment you want to take on the world – and the most photographed and documented day of your life from Facebook photos to the framed image on the wall of your parents house.”

“We saw the opportunity to transform the moment you are ready to take on the world into the platform to change it. Our idea was the Write of Passage, to own graduation day, asking university students to write letters in exchange for a yellow amnesty tassel to wear on your mortarboard hat as a visual symbol of your commitment.

“The yellow tassel is an entirely new and untapped medium. The visual symbol means these letters are not just sent and forgotten, but live on in photos and memories of graduation forever.

“We also recommended that people who have been wrongly imprisoned and experienced human rights abuses, be invited as a guest speaker at graduation ceremonies around the world, inspiring others to Write for Rights in the future.”